Progressive gun control advocates here in America will often point to the gun ban imposed in the United Kingdom as an excellent example of how significantly restricting the right of citizens to lawfully possess most firearms will lead to a safe and violence-free Utopia of sorts.

Common sense dictates that such an assertion is patently false, but now there are factual numbers coming out of the city of London cited by Fox News disprove the ludicrous assumption that banning guns makes citizens safer.

In the month of February, the city of London officially surpassed the city of New York in terms of its murder rate for the first time in modern history.

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Furthermore, while the murder rate in NYC has declined by nearly 90 percent in the past 30 years, murder and other violent crimes are on the rise in London.

The shocking story of historical significance was first reported by The U.K. Sunday Times, which noted that London suffered 15 murders in the month of February while New York City had 14.

Though not yet “official,” it appears the trend continued through March, as London experienced 22 murders in comparison to only 21 murders in NYC during the same period.

Given that these two cities have similarly-sized diverse populations, that means people are being murdered at a higher rate in London as opposed to NYC, despite the English city’s strict gun control laws.

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In fact, it is those strict gun control laws which have led to a sharp rise in knife crime across the U.K., and especially in London, where murders have increased by a stunning 38 percent in the past four years.

All told, London still has fewer murders (46) than NYC (55) so far this year and had fewer murders last year, as well. However, what used to be a massive gap between the murder rate of the two cities going back to the year 1800 — it fluctuated from about half to 1/20 — has closed significantly, and if the surge in knife crime continues unabated, could vanish altogether.

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The U.K. Daily Mail, which ran through a litany of recent murder victims, pointed out that no less than 12 people have been fatally stabbed or shot to death in just the past 19 days in London, proving once again that violent criminals don’t obey gun bans and will still obtain firearms, or simply resort to other weapons such as knives.

“What’s scary about London is the randomness of the crime,” said Jacob Whittingham, head of a charity group known as Fight for Peace. “With young people in London, you have no idea if and when you may be the victim of a violent crime — that’s why they feel the need to carry weapons.”

Ludicrously, London authorities are blaming the prevalence of social media for escalating long-standing grudges between rival factions as the reason behind the recent surge in violent crime.

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The sharp spike in murders — mostly at the point of a knife — came as the Metropolitan Police have recently stepped up enforcement measures to remove “dangerous weapons” from the streets, which include police sweeps through crime-ridden areas and a limited resumption of random “stop and searches” on the streets — similar to the much-maligned “stop and frisk” searches here in the U.S. that liberals decry as “racist” — to discover and recover banned weapons and dangerous items.

The fact that London’s murder rate has now surpassed that of New York City should disprove the fallacious argument that gun bans lead to lower violent crime rates and make citizens safer.

Furthermore, the fact that London’s murder rate has surpassed that of NYC in spite of its gun ban should bolster the counter-argument that more guns in the hands of law-abiding people can make people safer, as they then have the means to defend themselves from violent criminals.

At the very least, this shocking historical moment should be duly noted by gun rights advocates and thrown in the face of any gun grabber who attempts to cite the “violence-free Utopia” of London and the U.K. going forward, as their assertion has been proven false.

Ben Marquis is a writer who identifies as a constitutional conservative/libertarian. His focus is on protecting the First and Second Amendments. He has covered current events and politics for Conservative Tribune since 2014.

Ben Marquis lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the love of his life, as well as four dogs and four cats. He reads voraciously and writes about the news of the day from a conservative-libertarian perspective. He is an advocate for a more Constitutional government and a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, which protects the rest of our natural rights.